Paper short abstract:

The presentation explores how a Bosnian village negotiates its history of war rape through the Taussigian lens of ‘public secrecy’. Rape is subject to certain verbal taboos and survival is often narrated through the body and somatic expressions of distress, which challenge local codes of silence.

Paper long abstract:

The presentation explores the intimate ways in which a small village in Bosnia remembers and negotiates its history of war rape through the Taussigian lens of ‘public secrecy’. The rape of women and girls during four years of conflict forms part of local history that is widely known, yet rarely acknowledged and repeatedly disavowed; a matter regulated by silence and the unspoken rule that such information should remain hidden from the public realm for its potential to unsettle moral and gendered orders. The revelation of personal experiences of rape, thus, represents a violation of certain deep-seated taboos and, for women survivors, the consequences are potentially devastating; disclosure may lead to exposure, and exposure, in turn, to social exclusion. The secret of women’s rape survival has, instead, come to be narrated in other distinctive non-verbal ways, most especially through the body and somatic expressions of distress, which challenge local codes of silence and informal sanctions against public articulation. In exploring some of the many complex imbrications of secrecy in the village, the embodiment of trauma is regarded as an affecting presence, a language in its own right, and a rich source of social, cultural, and political knowledge. In this way, the presentation emphasises the need for an extension of existing explanatory frameworks so as to more thoroughly attend to embodiment and the senses as frames of narration and as a means of listening around and beyond words to reveal fuller and more complex meanings in the articulation of women’s wartime experiences.